Brendon Chase

by B. B.

  But luck was with them. Nobody came near, save the wild creatures of the woods: the foxes, rabbits, badgers and deer, and they, smelling before seeing, passed aside and shunned the spot.

  Robin shut up Bevis with a snap and rolled over on his stomach and began to cut slices of smoked ham, preparatory to frying it over the fire. ‘What about finding the Blind Pool tomorrow, you merry men? It’s somewhere around and I fancy a bit of fishing.’

  Little John thought it was a good idea. He felt ready for anything now and was as fit as his brothers.

  ‘I have an idea that if we follow the stream we’ll be bound to find it. The difficulty is that we don’t know whether it’s flowing from the pool or into it,’ said Big John.

  ‘Well, what about splitting forces?’ suggested Robin. ‘You and Little John follow it up and I’ll go down. We’re sure to find the Blind Pool then, if the stream really is connected with it. According to the map the Chase is about two miles across so the pool won’t be too easy to find.’

  ‘Bother,’ ejaculated Big John, ‘that reminds me, I meant to bring the map along. It was always kept in the hall drawer.’

  ‘Never mind,’ replied Robin, ‘we can manage without it and I’m not sure it isn’t more fun without a map. I rather like pretending I’m lost.’

  ‘I shouldn’t like to be lost in the Chase,’ said Little John, ‘wandering around all night without any grub. Besides, I shouldn’t know where to make for and I might run into the old charcoal burner or a keeper or something.’

  ‘Are those potatoes ready?’ asked Robin. Big John nodded. ‘Here you are, I’ve cut them up into thin slices – that’s right, isn’t it?’ Big John held the plate up for his inspection. It was piled with potato rings about a quarter of an inch thick. ‘They’ll do. We’ll cook ’em first before the ham ’cos they’ll take longer.’

  He dropped a lump of pork fat into the middle of the pan and it slid to the side, dissolving rapidly with faint spitting sounds. Then Big John passed the plate across and in a minute or two the bottom of the pan was hidden by a mosaic of potato slices.

  ‘The trick of getting ’em nice and brown is to put in only a very little fat,’ said the chef; ‘if you put in too much they won’t turn colour.’

  Now and again he flipped each slice over with the point of his hunting knife and soon they were a crisp golden hue, the colour of ripe corn.

  When these were cooked to his liking they were removed to a plate. Next followed the slices of ham, thick slices, with not too much fat on the upper edges. They skated about in the pan sizzling and spitting and gave out a delicious aroma. The pig had been a godsend to the outlaws and it certainly tasted better than any bacon they had ever had at the Dower House.

  When at last the meal was ready, all set to with a will. Washed down with hot sweet tea, nobody could have wished for a better feast.

  ‘My,’ said Little John, as he inserted the last morsel into his mouth, ‘that’s about the best supper I’ve ever had in all my life!’

  ‘You wait, young ’un,’ replied Robin, ‘we’ll have venison steak yet. I’m sure there are deer in the Chase because the Whiting told me he had seen one. If we can shoot a pig with the .22 we can shoot a deer if we put the bullet in the right place. But I’m not so sure we aren’t depending too much on outside supplies. After our sugar’s gone and the jam’s finished I’m not going back to the Dower House for more. It isn’t my idea of living in the wilds. We must rely on what we can shoot and fish.’

  ‘I think I should miss potatoes more than anything,’ said Big John. ‘Later there will be berries which will do for sweets.’

  ‘How long are we going to stay here?’ said Little John, after a pause.

  ‘Why? Gettin’ sick of it?’ asked Robin Hood.

  ‘No, don’t be an ass, of course I’m not. I feel I never want to go back to Cherry Walden again. I’d like to live in the woods all my life! I was just thinking what fun it will be later on, in the autumn and winter, when all the leaves start to fall and the snow comes.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Robin, ‘there’s a lot to do yet, we’ve got to find the Blind Pool and the charcoal burner … and heaps of things. I vote we just go back when we’re sick of it, or when Father and Mother come over … I’m not worryin’ about it anyway. I don’t think I ever want to sleep under a roof again. I should be like Mowgli in The Jungle Book, when they tried to make him sleep in the hut.’

  Big John burst out laughing. ‘I don’t expect our people will recognize us when we go back to Cherry Walden. They’ll come and shoo us away, firing off guns and beating tin cans like they did in The Jungle Book.’

  A nightjar began to whirr some distance away. The strange sound rose and fell, exactly like an old-fashioned spinning wheel.

  It was a beautifully still night. Across the clearing they could just see the first dog roses as little white blurs on a wall of green; even in the dusk they were visible.

  And the sweet fresh scents of the forest in the warm night were unbelievably lovely. Honeysuckle was a very common plant in the Chase and at fall of night its strong scent was almost overpowering.

  ‘What a life!’ exclaimed Little John, throwing himself back with his arms behind his head and staring up and up until he seemed to be floating about like thistledown among the stars.

  The soft rosy glow of the fire lit up the oak leaves and the great rough boughs. Dark shadows waved about mysteriously among the leafy caverns. ‘I wish we could always live like this, I wouldn’t care if I never saw a house again!’

  He shut his eyes for a moment and felt the warm breath of the fire and smelt the reek of woodsmoke. Then he opened his eyes again and floated away among the stars. Some were larger than others and hung solemnly regarding him, others wavered and blinked. One small orange-coloured star seemed to jig up and down.

  Little John began to think about the stars and planets, of how many were worlds and others were worlds to be or which were dead, like the moon. A foolish thought passed through his mind. They were like people, he was a God, seeing them all at a glance in various stages of creation. Then he began to feel frightened at the immensity of it all and his own littleness and at last he was glad to roll over and come to earth and watch the cosy flame-light playing about the faces of his brother outlaws.

  But for a twist of chance he would now be sleeping in the dorm at Banchester with a dozen other boys all snoring round him like pigs! And tomorrow morning, as he lay on his bracken couch listening to the birds singing in the grey light of dawn, with the dew on the grass and the foxes and badgers stealing back to their holes, those other poor unfortunates would be making the most of their last hour or two of sleep in the long dark dormitory. Before him life stretched away, one long panorama of delight; his lessons would be in another school, he thought, the school of the woods. He would learn how to snare and Robin would teach him how to shoot. Up to now he had never had the chance.

  Robin, also stretched beside the dying fire, had very much the same train of thought, though he was wondering what the Blind Pool would be like, if it was anything like Walden Pool. The owls were silent tonight, there was no mournful ‘I wish I had never been bor-r-r-n’ echoing across the dark and silent trees. All he could hear was the faint ‘click tick’ of the subsiding embers.

  A moth flew into the flame-light and whirled madly round at an incredible speed. Then it fell down into the ashes. From the other side of the fire heavy breathing showed that Big John had dropped asleep.

  It was time they went into the tree.

  They started forth directly after breakfast to find the Blind Pool. Robin, by right of chieftainship, claimed the rifle. Big John and Little John had to make shift with the former’s catapult. As Robin had suggested, they split forces when they reached the stream, which was only a few yards from the clearing, and after wishing each other good luck, Robin turned upstream and the others went in the opposite direction.

  Like Big John’s flannels, Robin’s trousers had been torn to tat
ters and he had constructed a skin kilt for himself with the fur on the inside. It was held round his waist by a belt he had made out of the pigskin.

  As he pushed his way along the course of the streamlet he kept his rifle unslung but not cocked as a twig might have caught the trigger.

  It was very warm work for, after a while, when the sun rose almost vertically overhead, its burning rays shone directly down. Many butterflies appeared as the morning advanced, mostly speckled woods. These insects seemed to prefer the shady ridings where the undergrowth met in a tunnel overhead, but he also came upon them deep under the bushes. They were odd little butterflies, he thought, they flopped along in such a leisurely manner. Brimstones were common in the sunnier spots and wherever there was a knapweed in flower he noticed the brimstones were there too.

  In places Robin came to dense thickets which barred his way. As I have said earlier, the forest had been very neglected, and though from the point of view of the health of the trees it would have been better if the underwood had been thinned, Robin revelled in the tangled masses of thicket and thorn.

  In very many places he had to crawl on all fours like an animal, following the runways which were only used by the wild woodland creatures. In this way he found scores of nests which he would have otherwise missed. For, on looking up at the intricate green pattern of the leaves above, with the sunlight behind it, any nest or ‘thickening’ was immediately seen. The principal birds were whitethroats and lesser whitethroats. Before the morning was out he had found six whitethroats’ nests, all with eggs. The bullfinch was another common bird in the Chase. Very often he could see the hen sitting, peeping at him over the rim of the nest with her round privet-berry eye, and her neat little black bonnet moving from side to side. Sometimes the eggs were visible. The bullfinch builds a very flimsy nest of rootlets and tiny lissom twigs, and lines it with horsehair, and the eggs show through the bottom.

  Robin loved to feel over the rim of these nests and withdraw, very tenderly, the pale bluish eggs which were spotted and streaked with madder brown. These spots were nearly always arranged in a zone, or cap, at the larger end. The eggs varied in shape too; some bullfinch’s eggs were nearly round, others oval, some pointed.

  In the thick fern and underwood by the streamside he came upon a pheasant’s nest. The hen burst from under his feet with a great clatter and startled him out of his wits. If he had had a chance to shoot the cock bird I am afraid he would have done so, even though it was the breeding season, for the outlaws had not yet managed to bag a pheasant and they had come upon several in the Chase. The big pale eggs were hard set and he did not interfere with the nest.

  It was surprising how hot he became thrusting and battling with the underwood. The sweat ran down into his eyes and his hair was dank and wet. But he moved light-footed, like a true hunter and watched where he put his feet. He had no means of guessing how far he had come. The stream wound about among the fern and underbrush and it was difficult to judge distance.

  He came upon one or two clearings among the trees. In one spot some ash poles had been cut down and stacked neatly at the side of a path. Robin went on one knee and examined the earth. Even in a dry summer these woodland paths remain moist for they are shielded from the sun, and the damp moss grows green and soft. He saw the marks of hobnailed boots, and they looked quite fresh. Somebody must have passed that way the preceding day. These signs made him move with extreme caution.

  It would have been a lesson to watch him. By nature he was a born hunter and wild woodsman, and when he liked he could move as cautiously and silently as a fox. He was a dead shot too, and took a pride in the trim little weapon under his arm. He only wished it was his own. One day he would buy just such a rifle as this. It was wasted on Rumbold. The old man never cleaned it. He left it mouldering in the cupboard in the potting shed, never looking at it for months at a time. Robin had cleaned and oiled it and had adjusted the telescopic sight. The weapon now shot with great accuracy.

  Now and again a rabbit crossed his path, or he glimpsed one bobbing away under the briars, showing its white beacon, but he did not shoot. The footprint on the path made him uneasy. He had an idea he was somewhere near the charcoal burner’s dwelling. Now and again he fancied he smelt the curious fragrant smell of the ‘pits’.

  During the course of that morning he came upon several hedgehogs. One was a mere baby, not seven inches long, with little soft spines. He thought of taking it back for a pet but soon got tired of carrying it and let it go again. They had found many hedgehogs, at dusk, near the oak tree clearing, but truth to say, though they longed to sample one for the pot, they could not bring themselves to kill the quaint little spined urchins. They looked so comical when they ran along and their little eyes were full of intelligence. They looked friendly, lovable beasts.

  As Robin stole forward he came to a small clearing surrounded by birches, the first birches he had seen in the Chase, and floating round these was a beautiful white admiral. This was by no means a common insect in the forest. The boys had once seen a single specimen in High Wood. They had gone with the Whiting the preceding summer and the excitement had been intense when the beautiful pied butterfly had been spied by Harold as it feasted on a blackberry blossom.

  Robin had no net with him now and he wished he had. He was hatless too, so he could only watch it as it floated about enjoying the warm sun, now and again settling on some of the upper branches of the birch trees where it perched, opening and shutting its wings.

  He spent quite twenty minutes staring at it. It looked like a lovely wrought ornament of jet and ivory. How excited the others would have been to see this rare insect! Here, at any rate, would be something to tell them!

  With so much scrambling and crawling Robin felt desperately thirsty and he drank deeply from the stream. He longed for a swim. If only he could find the Blind Pool! At last he came to an open space in the forest where the bracken was up to his shoulders. The air was perfectly windless and heavy with the scent of summer. And at that spot the little brooklet had carved out for itself a fairy pool some ten yards long. It looked quite deep. He could see the spotted shingle on the bottom where some thick hazels overhung it, and knew it was no more than a foot or two. Tiny fish darted about. They were sticklebacks. Robin lay on his stomach and drew himself close to the margin of the pool, his face hidden in the lush sweet-smelling bracken. Pink ‘milkmaid’ flowers dropped over him and his back was partly shielded from the sun by the chequered shade of the leaves overhead.

  What a beautiful spot! Could anything be nearer Paradise? The wood pigeons were cooing all about him in the trees, the whole forest was murmuring with their drowsy voices.

  Robin was a strange boy, at least to many people he would have appeared strange. He loved best to be by himself in the woods. He liked to hunt on his wild lone and wander just like this, for a whole day, in some leafy secret place where nobody bothered to come. It was his idea of heaven. When, as now, he would come upon something which took his fancy, time would cease to be for him; he would be lost in a kind of ecstatic stupor.

  As he lay looking down into this miniature pool his sharp eyes took in every detail, even the minute shadows of the sticklebacks were noted. Each fish had a shadow beneath it on the sandy floor. After a while, as he kept very still, they became bold and emerged from the shaded water under the hazel leaves and went about their business in their own watery kingdom.

  He could see their minute fins trembling, and what perfect fins! These fishes in miniature were truly fascinating. The Creator must have had eyes like a watchmaker, thought Robin, to have made such delicate fishes, and he smiled to himself. The cock fish were very pretty with their bright blue backs and red throats.

  They did not glide along in the water; they seemed to progress in jerks. Sometimes a cock stickleback would chase another away and then it moved with great speed, like an arrow, coming to a sudden full stop, opening and shutting its mouth, puffing out its lips.

  On this same pool
were water skaters or fiddlers. When Robin had come up to the pool these insects had all darted into the grass and ferns at the edge but as he lay quiet they emerged again and began skating about the surface. He saw the tiny dimple made in the water by their feet. They seemed to run about with as much ease as if they were on hard ground.

  After a while a fly fell off the hazel leaves, a greenfly. It landed close to the edge but in a minute quite half a dozen water skaters had seized it and the largest bore it away in its jaws with all the others jumping after him.

  Then a buzzing sounded in Robin’s ear. It was a wild honeybee. He knocked it with his hand and it, too, fell into the water in front of him where it buzzed round making a circular fan of minute ripples. Several fiddlers immediately came skating up. They seemed at first rather afraid of the bee, but one, bolder than his fellows, darted in a rapier thrust. The bee’s struggles grew weaker and finally its attacker began to run off with it wedged across his jaws. Robin had never realized what savage little insects they were; they reminded him of a pack of hounds.

  The bee vainly tried to sting its captor but it was held fast. As Robin watched these fierce little creatures he noticed that some were fighting. Now and again one would fall over on to its back and show its silver underside. They skipped about each other like crickets.

  It was delicious lying there among the cool bracken but the water seemed more inviting still. So he stripped off his shirt and the skin kilt and rolled off the bank. The pool only just covered his body when he lay down full length; it was a natural bath.

  The water was warm in the full sun’s glare, but when he sidled under the nut leaves it was quite chill. What a fairy-like little pool it was! Then he turned over on to his stomach facing upstream and watched the ripples hurrying round the bend towards him. He stretched out his arms – they looked blue under the water – and raised his fingers so that streams of silver bubbles came past his ears and nostrils.